February 2016

Oracle Corp, the IT giant best known for its enterprise database solutions, this year concluded a special recruitment drive in Asia-Pacific (APAC). But unlike what one might expect, the new recruits were not engaged to fill the technical positions in the company. Instead, the Fortune 500 company had gone on a hiring spree to bolster its sales team.

Last March, the company embarked on an ambitious goal to hire 1,000 sales personnel within a three-month period. It managed to recruit talents from a “fairly even distribution” across countries in APAC during that time frame. Oracle declines to provide a breakdown of the numbers, but declares the recruitment drive was a success. Today, the recruits have fully integrated into their roles after completing several training initiatives by the company...

Today IBM and Catalogic announced that a new set of solutions that combines Catalogic’s flagship product, ECX, with several of IBM’s products. The new joint solutions are aimed at modernizing IT infrastructure including automation of storage and data management, self-service capabilities, and complete RESTful API management. This modernization should deliver superior results while lowering OPEX. The joint solutions will enable companies to accelerate implementation of new use cases and workloads.

As we stated previously: ECX manages the full lifecycle of Copy Data. The software is deployed as a virtual appliance allowing IT to leverage the existing storage investment without going to the "rip and replace" method of expanding storage. And ECX has several use cases including: leverage copy data by orchestrating and automating consistent SnapMirrors to automated disaster recovery, Test Dev, and analytics; next generation data protection through instant recovery and disaster recovery by leveraging snapshot data; hybrid cloud “killer app” that uses orchestration to leverage liquid compute resources in the cloud, and copy data analytics with advanced search, report and analyze...

Every once in a while I get asked what my background is, and my answer is always that I'm a generalist: a jack of all trades and master of some. Being a generalist is not easy in a world where IT professionals have been told since the beginning to specialize. However, it requires a generalist to see the forest for the trees, an analogy well-suited to the continually emerging world of cloud computing.

In 2001, I started my journey into the world of cloud computing. With a background in plant-floor automation and embedded systems, my point of view was admittedly skewed with a natural affinity for distributed computing. The hot topic at the time was grid computing, and as I was learning about it, I recognized a model that made sense: CPU scavenging. CPU scavenging virtualizes all the spare CPU cycles wasted on desktops and servers as they wait for something to do (when operating on a scale measured in billionths of a second, it turns out a lot of time is wasted waiting for something to do)...

Last month LinkedIn published an analysis of the 25 Skills That Could Get You Hired in 2016. There’s a 19 page report available on Slideshare that provides a breakout of the hottest skills of 2015 on LinkedIn by country. Countries included in the analysis include Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Netherlands, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States. Key takeaways from the study include the following:

1) Cloud computing was the hottest skill in demand in France, India, and the United States in 2015 and will continue in 2016. LinkedIn found that cloud computing skills have progressed from being niche to mainstream as the world’s most in-demand skill set.

2) Statistical Analysis and Data Mining is the only skill set that ranks in the top 4 across all countries analyzed. LinkedIn found that businesses are hiring expertise in data storage, retrieval and analysis as fast as they can be on-boarded. LinkedIn also found that there weren’t enough members with big data skills including Hadoop, HBase, and Hive listed on their profiles to rank the category on the global list in 2014. In 2015, LinkedIn saw a rapid increase in members worldwide listing these types of skills on their profiles...

Microsoft may have been late to the cloud party, but steady investment and improvements to its Azure cloud have made it a worthy competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Yet like most cloud platforms, Azure pricing is filled with potential complexity. Among the many advantages of moving to the cloud for cash-strapped IT departments is saving on continued investment in on-premises infrastructure by off-loading to an off-premise cloud platform. In addition to savings in hardware costs and the real estate required to maintain a datacenter, management and security is handled to a great extent (though not completely) by the cloud provider.

Cloud systems let you pay for what you need and scale up, which is far better than guessing at, for example, how many servers you need to buy and maintain in-house and risk getting more than you need or scrambling to add as demand increases. One reason some industries – like retail – overbuy is to handle demand spikes around the holidays even though that means a fair bit of capacity will go underutilized during other parts of the year...

Advanced Micro Devices is continuing a steady drumbeat of product releases as officials look to make the chip maker a larger player in everything from high-end gaming PCs and virtual desktops to cloud computing. The company on Feb. 1 unveiled virtualized graphics cards that can be housed in data center servers and delivered as needed to a range of devices, including remote workstations and other client systems. A day later, officials introduced two new desktop processors—the A10-7860K and Athlon X4 845—featuring AMD's new Wraith Cooler thermal system that they said generate less than a 10th of the noise of previous chips.

"Customers can build a capable, near-silent online gaming PC in a surprisingly small form factor for an unexpectedly low price," Kevin Lensing, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's Client Business Unit, said in a statement. "The low-power requirements mean you can build a tiny system perfect for a small dorm room, for use in the living room as a home theatre PC … and portable enough to take to a LAN party."...

Microsoft has finally released the first technical preview of its new Azure Stack offering, the company's customized cloud bundle, after being delayed for a number of months.

So what is Azure Stack all about?

It is Microsoft's new hybrid cloud platform product designed to provide organizations with the ability to deliver Azure services from their own on-premises data center in a way that remains consistent with the current public cloud version of Azure.

Managed hosting and colocation business, Pulsant, has launched a customised decision engine, created to help C-level executives and management to evaluate the cloud buying process and make more informed choices. The new interactive tool has been developed to assist buyers in wading through the myriad options of cloud services that are available.

The decision engine — ‘Cloud Intelligence’ — caters for technical and non-technical visitors, ensuring visitors are able to find the information that meets their needs. The configuration tools separates technical users familiar with the technology landscape from those less knowledgeable, like procurement personnel tasked with researching technical solutions...

You can have all the infrastructure and platforms in the cloud you want. But let's face it; it's the cloud computing applications that people use to get real work done. From applications for finance and marketing, to business intelligence and analysis software, to tools for managing IT systems and mobile devices, cloud-based software is what brings everyday users into the cloud picture.

Here are 20 cloud software vendors -- from established companies such as SAP and NetSuite to startups such as Domo and CognitiveScale -- that caught our attention. Some are cool because of their leading-edge technology while others achieve “coolness” through their success in bringing cloud software to a wide audience of users...

Microsoft may have found a solution for some of the cloud computing industry’s biggest problems by moving its clouds under the sea. The Redmond company on Monday released details about a prototype for an underwater data center. Throughout a one-year pilot, called Project Natick, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) built and submerged a 10-by-7-foot, 38,000-pound data center about a half-mile off the Pacific Coast.

As Microsoft's cloud business ­– which reached $6.3 billion in revenue during the most recent quarter – continues to grow, so does the company’s need to store data. Underwater data centers, Microsoft found, decrease cooling and power costs, use more renewable energy, reduce latency and can be set up more quickly...

Having been following the technology industry since the dawn of the cloud age (which was, after all, only a decade or so ago) I've been privy to some pretty interesting conversations. Indeed, when it comes to the adoption of cloud, Gandhi's quote springs to mind: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

I remember eight years ago or so sitting in a conference where large traditional technology vendors were busy telling people that cloud wasn't real, that it was dangerous, that no real enterprise could ever trust it. Fast forward a few years and with the increasing success of cloud vendors, the traditional organizations changed their tune and started slapping the word "cloud" on top of their existing products...

The Sixth Flag, Inc. today revealed its model of Cell Structure Security to secure its Workspace-as-a-Service in the Cloud. Recognizing traditional approaches to securing the cloud and enterprise networks are still falling short, Pete Kofod, founder and CEO of The Sixth Flag, has found that this concept, which he developed from experience in the military, to be highly effective in securing his Workspace-as-a-Service.

"A cell structure is a system that is highly resilient to external compromise and severely limits the ability of an attacker to further exploit the organization beyond the cell. Should the cell be compromised, the parent organization immediately isolates and collapses it. This is a concept regularly employed in clandestine warfare, which we have adapted to the securing of our virtual workspace," says Pete Kofod, Founder of The Sixth Flag, Inc.

Zadara Storage, the provider of award-winning, enterprise–class storage-as-a-service (STaaS) today announced record revenue in 2015. The company’s success can be attributed to delivering industry-leading solutions in a market that is in a significant transition from CapEx-based storage to one dominated by OpEx-based storage-as-a-service. Zadara Storage offers unique and disruptive capabilities that address this market transition, such as enterprise-grade storage-as-a-service – in the cloud, on-premise and in hybrid configurations. Industry research has shown that the storage-as-a-service market will grow from about 10% of the overall storage market in 2015, to at least 80% by 2023 (source: IT Brand Pulse, October 2015).

Container World takes place February 16-18, 2016 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. Container World is the only two day event to host full ecosystem discussions around application and OS containers. Recognizing the appetite for market knowledge and insight into the nascent container market, this event has developed two content rich conference tracks which focus on the business and technical opportunities, and answers questions surrounding container adoption.

Showcasing the current benefits and future impact of container technology on application and infrastructure teams, and the cloud market, Container World brings together 750+ attendees from across the technology ecosystem.

Midokura, the global innovator in software network virtualization, today announced the next generation of its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) technology. MEM 5.0 is a scalable network virtualization solution designed for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. The new version builds upon Midokura's award-winning, enterprise- grade technology to support even the most critical network virtualization deployments with significantly new enhanced operational tools for OpenStack operators.

"We are pleased to offer the market a significant new version of our network virtualization technology," said Pino de Candia, CTO of Midokura. "Operational tools are generally geared towards configurations, monitoring in OpenStack, but they offer no visibility into encapsulated traffic. From Midokura's own experience as an operator, and by working with operators ourselves, we've seen firsthand the dire need for analytic and end-to-end operational tools for management of network infrastructure. Midokura Enterprise MidoNet 5.0 builds upon our popular technology to meet this need, making OpenStack far simpler to manage, operate and also troubleshoot."

To meet growing demand for Microsoft Azure on its proven cloud delivery platform, CloudBolt Software is now available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Customers can quickly deploy CloudBolt with Microsoft Azure from the Azure Marketplace portal to manage servers, applications, and environments across a wide range of virtualization and cloud providers.

As enterprise use of cloud computing grows, there is increasing demand for vendor-agnostic multi-cloud management. CloudBolt delivers IT automation and end-user self-service through a simply powerful console. Administrators can control their virtualization environments, private clouds, and public clouds all from a single interface, and they can present services and applications to end users through an intuitive user portal.

IBM today announced a broad expansion of its Cloud Data Services portfolio with more than 25 services now available on the IBM Cloud. They are designed to help developers build, deploy and manage web and mobile applications and enable data scientists to discover hidden trends using data and analytics in the cloud. The hybrid cloud services can be deployed across multiple cloud providers and are based on open source technologies, open ecosystems that include company and third-party data, and open architectures that allows data to easily flow amongst the different services.

In addition to self-service capabilities for everything from data preparation, migration, and integration, to tools for advanced data exploration and modeling, IBM introduced the following new cloud data services today:

The annual survey of the top 500 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in Europe shows some major changes due to substantial growth in some areas, consolidation and changing market conditions. After a slow rise of 5% in the previous year, it looks like ISV fortunes have turned around strongly in 2015, based on early figures. The latest database report by IT Europa, ISVs in Europe - the top 500, published today shows a shake-up at the top of the list of individual companies, with three newcomers to the top ten. There has also been a big jump in those reporting that they offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In 2016, nearly 90% of ISVs said they offer SaaS, an increase of over 60% from 2014. But it is not all packages and cloud; bespoke software development is also on the rise with just under 60% offering it.

New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate the cloud infrastructure services market, achieving a worldwide market share of over 31% in the quarter. Microsoft and Google have by far the highest growth rates among the market leaders but are making little impact on AWS, which continues to grow strongly and to increase its market share. IBM meanwhile continues to lead within the private and hybrid services segment.

Analytics — with its massive quantities of data requiring plenty of processing juice and storage space — is a natural fit for the cloud. Organizations are still dipping their toes into the possibilities, but this is about to accelerate dramatically.

That’s the takeaway from a recent survey conducted by IDG and published by Informatica of the 200 IT and business decision makers in the survey say they have deployed one or more cloud analytics solutions. This may be growing over the months and years to come, with 68% of respondents saying they intend to investigate, analyze or actively plan to deploy cloud analytics solutions over the coming year. In addition, 74% said they expect to adopt a hybrid or cloud-only approach to analytics over the next three years...